Expedia Group’s earnings report Thursday included an interesting nugget about its technology hiring efforts, indicating that the Seattle-based online travel giant is capitalizing on cutbacks in the broader tech industry.
Julie Whalen, the company’s chief financial officer, told analysts on a conference call that Expedia Group has “continued to invest in talent across our product and technology teams” to support strategic initiatives.
“We’re pleased we were able to more readily fill these positions given the surplus of top-tier tech talent in the market,” Whalen said. “We also saw a higher salary expense associated with our annual compensation increases this year, which went into effect during the second quarter.”
Some tech companies, such as Microsoft, have frozen salaries this year due to economic uncertainty and cutbacks in spending by corporate customers.
Due in part to its increased employment and compensation expenses, Expedia Group reported that overhead expenses rose 14% in the second quarter to $627 million.
Still, the company tried to remain disciplined in its overall spending, Whalen told analysts. As evidence of that discipline, the company was able to post a $385 million profit in the quarter, from a $185 million loss a year earlier.
Although the company increased its overall employment in the past two years, Expedia has made targeted layoffs this year, after more widespread cutbacks during the pandemic, when the travel industry was rocked by COVID-19 restrictions.
After peaking at more than 25,000 employees in 2019, the company employed 14,800 people at the end of 2021, nearly half of them in tech-related positions. That rose to 16,500 at the end of 2022, more than half in tech roles. A new employee count won’t be disclosed publicly until the end of the year, a spokesperson said.
Expedia Group includes brands such as vrbo, Orbitz, Hotwire, Trivago, and Hotels.com in addition to the flagship Expedia.com. The company has combined the tech platform beneath its different brands in recent years, and recently launched a unified travel loyalty program called One Key for Expedia, Hotels.com and vrbo.
It has also been expanding its role as a tech platform for others in the travel industry, and betting on generative artificial intelligence initiatives, including integration of ChatGPT for travel planning in its Expedia app.
Overall for the second quarter, Expedia Group reported record revenue of $3.36 billion, up more than 5%, but less than Wall Street’s expectations. Gross bookings were up 4.5% to $27.32 billion, but also short of analysts’ expectations.
Its stock fell 16% after the earnings report Thursday morning.
